Relax Into Surrender And Receive What Is Promised

“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is?  What could be more insane than to oppose life itself which is now and always now?  Surrender to what is.  Say “yes” to life and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you”  – Eckhart Tolle

When you are in resistance to something you expend a lot of energy trying to stop something that can’t be stopped.

Imagine that you are holding a rubber band as far as it can be stretched.  At some point one of two things are going to happen.  The band will experience fatigue, break and snap your hands painfully, or you will let it go, releasing the tension.

If you find yourself exhausted every single day, you might want to check to see what you are creating resistance to.

What inner conflict and struggle is going on in your life?  What rigid habits or mind sets do you have which are in conflict with your journey?

Relax and tune into your inner guidance.  Follow where your intuition leads.  Then gently let go of what is creating this tension, the thing that is no longer serving you.  Experience the joy of renewed energy when you are in the flow of your life path.

Part of the process of learning to surrender to what is, is the process of learning to love who you are in this moment.  Accepting yourself with all of your imperfections actually empowers you to grow into your potential.

It is kind of opposite of what you may think.  You put yourself down thinking that condemning parts of yourself, is the way to change those parts of you that aren’t perfect.

Think of a metal spring.  Hold it between two of your fingers, pressing your fingers together so that it is totally compacted.  No space left.  This is how you treat yourself.  Like the expression, “too tightly wound”.  You compress your feelings, your desires.  You hold fingers tightly thinking that it puts you in control.  That you can force yourself to hide the parts you don’t want others to see.

“The greatness of a man’s power is in the measure of his surrender”  – William Booth

But at some point, your fingers are going to get tired.  When that happens you are going to let go of that spring.  Then that spring is going to bounce all over the room.

When that happens, you create a pattern of self-sabotage in your life.  Your life turns into a Greek tragedy. You implode and whatever you were trying to hide, will expose itself in a big way.

But what if instead of trying to hold tightly to the spring, you released the tension just a little bit?  Then a little bit more and more, until there is no tension left.  You find the spring just stands there, perfectly balanced.

By surrendering to who you really are, you empower yourself to become better.  Instead of being your enemy, it becomes your teacher.  You learn to work with it, instead of fighting against it.

“Surrender requires courage.  In meditation, you confront yourself with your problems again and again until you finally understand the absolute need to let go.  Otherwise, you will continue to emphasize the lack of acceptance, regrets, pain . . .   But  when acceptance comes, I can see smiles on your faces”  – Sahajananda

You can’t control other people’s actions or reactions.  You can’t really control your own.  You can learn to let go.

To be like water.  To flow through, under, over, around the obstacles in your life.

Trying to push the boulder uphill just uses up your energy and leaves you tired, angry and frustrated.  Going around the boulder and continuing down your path is much easier.  Don’t try to drag the boulder back down the hill with you.

Leave it alone.  When you surrender, you also release.  It is a do or don’t do thing.  You either surrender or you don’t.  There is no part way to surrender process.  Find the blocks and release them completely.  Or don’t.

It takes a great level of self-love and determination to live your life this way.  But it is the way to growth and change.  To be able to live life as the greatest version of your true self.

True surrender is not giving up or giving in.  It has nothing to do with failure.  It is not being defeated by something greater than you are.

It doesn’t mean that you become welcome mats and let everyone wipe their feet on you.

It is simply and profoundly going with the flow of life. 

Most of the rules you put into your life were built on the concept of fear.  Fear of being hurt, so you closed up.  Fear of being wrong, so you shut up.  Fear of being exposed or humiliated, so you became invisible.

Surrender is about being vulnerable to all of those fears.  To realizing that you are much stronger than you think you are.  That if the worst happens, you can live and grow through that experience in a new way.  You can transform through any experience to come out the other side, stronger and more beautiful than you were.

“The inspiration you seek is already within you.  Be silent and listen”  – Rumi

It is about accepting what is, not what you were in expectation of.  It is about letting go of the should’s and could’s, and accepting what is.  It is silencing the mind and listening to your heart and souls voice.

Go from being a “human doing” to a “human being”.  The mind is all about doing.  The heart and soul connection is all about being who you are at the center of your being.

Believe in your potential, have faith in what will be.  Like the caterpillar, have faith that when you emerge from the chrysalis an even better life will begin.

Music Is The Strongest Form Of Magic

“Music gives a soul to the universe, flight to the imagination, and life to everything”  – Plato

When you are having a really bad day, do you ever turn to music to shift your mind off whatever is happening in your life?  Isn’t it amazing how music even without any lyrics can clear your head so that you stop spinning in the endless anxiety loop?  Lift your spirits?  Heal your broken heart?  Do you have a play list that speaks to your inner world, one that you play when you are sad, or happy, or depressed, or in unspeakable joy?  A playlist that expresses where you are and a playlist that expresses where you want your vibration to return to; a playlist that expresses who you are as a person in your inner world, your soul being authentically real?

“Music unwraps the heart, sings out the prayer, dances the Spirit, and opens the Soul”  – Mary Davis

Music is used in so many ways.  There are lots of musical therapies out there with sound healing.  They play music at events to pump people up.  They have religious music that simply takes you into heavenly places.  Listening to a movie soundtrack you can feel the drama even without the visual scene happening.  Music can take you up on a emotional roller coaster, from laughing hysterically one moment and then down into the depths of sadness and despair the next.  It can be sexy, religious, militant or patriotic.  It can raise energy up and have you dancing across the room to a primal beat or soothe you to dreamland.

“Music makes us want to live.  You don’t know how many times people have told me that they’d been down and depressed and just wanted to die.  But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength.  That’s the power music has”  – Mary J. Blige

Music is the strongest form of magic.  Every culture has it.  No matter your situation in life, no matter how poor you are, you can find a way to make music in your life.  You can create a drum set from buckets or pots that you hit with a stick.  You can fill water glasses with different levels of water to create sound variations.  No matter what – your soul demands that you have music in your life.  Have you ever sat and listened to a street musician that plays on whatever is around him to make sound?  The pipe on the building, the concrete, the bucket – all make a different noise and the street musician knows how to tap each one to make a unique sound that he blends into music.

“Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us” –  Martin Luther

One of my favorite bands Pentatonix, is a great example of music being created without instruments.  When you hear their songs, you would swear that instruments were being played.  They use the voice box, tongue, teeth, and lips to mimic the sounds of a drum, a guitar, and they create the music.  They take the idea of music being the sound of movement to a whole new level simply with their voices.  Listen to their version of “Hallelujah” and you will hear what I mean.

“Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black show sadness.  But as you go through life’s journey, remember that the black keys also create music”  – Shinzoo.com

Life can’t be all rainbows and lollipops.  It gives you both happiness and sadness, the full emotional range of experiences.  You appreciate the good days because you have experienced the bad ones.  You also get a chance to see that even the sad, bad experiences, have good moments wrapped up inside of them.  With music the sound creates the canvas for the musician to color with the lyrics.  I think that is what drew me to the quote for the photo.  Sometimes it is the music that reaches inside your soul to expresses your emotions when words just don’t seem to cover it.  Sometimes it is the lyrics that express perfectly what your hearts music is trying so hard to put into words.

“Whenever I have a problem, I sing.  Then I realize that my voice is a lot worse than my problem”  – Unknown

It is hard to tell someone in a way that they can hear, how much you love them.  How much a friendship has meant to your life.  I have these special girlfriends that I have known, some for just a few years and others for decades.  I know that I could call them right this second and say – I need you here right now, and they would jump in the car or book the flight within minutes.  And I would do the same for them.  It is such a blessing to be able to call someone and the first words out of their mouth is, how can I help – what do you need, and I know they mean it.  I am in gratitude that I have this in my life, both that I would gift it to them and they would gift it to me.

The lyrics of a song can sometimes convey what our minds and heart can’t think of to say.  The best lyrics help you smile through the tears.  They bring you to tears.  They give you goosebumps, or as we call them Godbumps.  The best lyrics help you realize answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.  Music can teach you things about how to live life.  Lady Gaga’s music may have conveyed to you that it is ok to be different, and to be proud of it.  Taylor Swift has every bad boyfriend song there is.  Michael Jackson taught us to look at the man in the mirror.  All of the music genres teach you something about life.

“Music is a world within itself, it is a language we all understand”  – Stevie Wonder

When my mom was in a good mood she was playing Neil Diamond.  When she was in a bad mood, the opera was playing so loud the people in the next town could hear it.  If the opera was playing, you either stayed outside or went quietly to your room.  If she was just humming, it was the best time to ask her for what you wanted.  My mom was totally into expressing her moods with her music.

Today I wish you the happiness of a Bob Marley song.  And make sure your hear that Reggae music in your head as you read it.  It makes it even more magical.

“Don’t worry about a thing.  Every little thing is gonna be alright” – Bob Marley

Life’s Adventures Unlock The Mystery of Who You Are, Start Now

“If happiness is the goal, and it should be, then adventures should be a priority” – Richard Branson

Why should adventures be a priority?  Because it is the best way to learn about yourself and the world.  You learn about what you are afraid of, what challenges you.  What deep seated beliefs you have that you might not be aware of.  It is in fact the best way to experience “LIFE”.  You go somewhere you have never been.

It could be a walk in the woods around where you live.  A hike in the mountains.  A walk along the sea shore, listening to the sea birds call out over the sounds of the waves crashing against the sandy beach.  It could be your first time in an airplane or a cruise ship.  Sitting in a train, you watch the majesty of nature roll by as you cross the rocky mountains, and someplace deep inside you feel the shift.

Somewhere along the line, something will happen out of the ordinary.  You will start out on a certain kind of journey, and along the way the mystery of why you chose that path will reveal itself to you.

“As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen”  – Winnie The Pooh

What is so interesting about travel and adventure is the attitude you bring to it.  You can magnify every discomfort into an ordeal, or you can get curious about what is happening around you.  You can experience it all as an adventure.  You get out of the ruts in your life.  Adventures are the best way to let some stories happen to you.  Discover new trails you didn’t know existed.  Adventures answer questions you didn’t know you had, because with adventures you gain first hand knowledge and experience.

“The books we read answer questions we didn’t even know existed”  – Axel Marazzi

There might be switch backs along the trail and you decide to walk off the trail, and cut through straight up the mountainside.  You come to forks in the trail with no signs, so you have to choose to go this way or that way.  Sometimes the trees are so thick you can’t see the sun.

• It is in the getting lost, that you become aware of what is important.  What are you willing to do to get it?
• It is in the replacing of fear with curiosity that you truly see what your options are.
• It is in seeing the endless stream of possibilities are always there for you to see, but you get so single mindedly focused that you miss every door of opportunity.

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams”  – Oprah

Are you a planner?  I like to get into the details and have things laid out.  It took a lot of practice for me to start leaving space in my plans to just be adventurous.  My husband loves to just get in the car and take a drive.  No real destination, just drive down a road we have never taken, with no idea where it would take us.  Everyone needs someone like my husband, who grabs your arm and says lets go have an adventure.

“Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your live was meant to be”  – Steve Pavlina

Not planning gives me anxiety.  It feels unstable.  But slowly through years of practice, I allow for spontaneity in my life.  Is it easy for you to follow maps to the edges, and then step off the edge?  You know that the world isn’t flat.  You know there are no monsters of the deep to drag your boat down to the bottom of the ocean.

• Do you go to sleep with stars that you don’t recognize?
• How often do you order something you have never eaten before?
• Do you have the conviction, that whatever you are looking for in life, it is out there waiting for you to find it?

There is no end to what you can discover about yourself when you adventure out with your eyes wide open.  Let the journey unfold itself before you.

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us”  – Charles Bukowski

A lifetime of adventures

One of my favorite movies is with Diane Lane, in “Under The Tuscan Sun”.  After a bad a breakup, she is gifted with a vacation in Italy by her best friend.  While on the tour bus, they pass by this house and all of a sudden she makes them stop and let her off.  And that is when her adventure really begins.  She ends up buying the house, restoring it, and meets all of these new people.  She has this idea of what she wants in her life to make her happy – her dream life.  At the end of the movie she has everything she wanted, but it all came to her in a totally different way than she planned.

When you try to make life conform to a plan, you miss the mystery and magic of what it is really supposed to be.  The best gift you can give yourself is a lifetime of adventures.

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” – Confucius

There is a wonderful book by Jack Canfield called “The Golden Motorcycle Club” and in it he writes that we travel in soul groups.  I can just see the ad for my soul group.

“Limitless soul seeking like minded limitless souls, to journey down to earth for a great adventure.  You will be leaving a good life here, to go for a greater experience of life there.  For in going out into the world of the physical body, you will succeed in discovering that you are far more than you ever dreamed of.  You will find that stories are not just something that you can read about.  Stories are what happens to you and for you when you live a life of adventure.  You will discover if you are, “the girl made up of adventure and wine and all things fine”, or “the girl made up of adventure, fine beer, brains and no fear”.

And so . . . the ADVENTURE BEGINS.  Let’s go do something remarkable.

Connection Comes From The Unfolding Of The Deepest Truth Of Who We Are

 

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.  There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.  You feel it, don’t you?

 – Rumi

Mind, body, heart, soul, the physical body, the spiritual body – bringing them into harmony is like being the orchestra conductor for a symphony.  You have all these different instruments that you bring together to create this fine blend of harmonious sound, and not just a cacophony of sounds.  To weave the notes together to make a beautiful piece of music.  The rising out as a soloist and then the weaving back down into the harmony.   There is a space in this vast room for improvisation like in jazz, where they create bridges that lead in new directions as well as bring the music back to the beginning.

Everyone’s life is an evolution of emotions, spirit and beliefs.  The storyline changes, plots thicken, main characters mature and new spiritual journeys begin.  This is true of inspirational authors.  Their books represent only stages of their life.  New triumphs of the soul have yet to be written.

 – Shannon L. Alder

Instrument’s in effect disturb the air around them evolving into sounds, music.  The notes played arise out of the no-thing-ness of creation to blend into other vibrations thereby creating sounds that can fill you with peace, ecstatic joy, with a feeling of living outside of your own world.  You can reach any emotion with music, making people smile, laugh or bringing them down into intense sorrow.  Have you ever listened to a soundtrack from a movie and you can tell from the soundtrack this is the battle scene, the kissing scene, the near death and triumphant rescue scene?  You don’t even have to know the movie and you can tell based on the emotions within you, what must be happening in the movie at that particular point.  It is like going on a musical journey of someone’s personal soul journey, their heroes journey of personal transformation.

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential . . . these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

 Each instrument is an individual point of consciousness for just those few minutes of playing a masters creation.  You can shift different instruments in and out of the piece and the piece totally changes.  Some changes are small, such as having three violins instead of four, or major such as all of the violins being silent.  In the same way small shifts in our mind, body and soul can be used to help us reach out and achieve our dreams, to reach our highest potential.

Always choose the path the feeds the soul

 – Confucius

 Music provides a detailed road map to where you are going with the piece being played.  There is a tangible vision of how it should be performed.  But there is also a space for the individual playing the piece to do their own version.  They can speed it up, slow it down.  Have you ever listened to various musicians cover a song where they take the song to a whole new place?  It is so interesting to me because when I have a favorite song and someone switches it up, sometimes I am “Wow that sounds wonderful”, and sometimes I am “Wow that really doesn’t work”.  It all depends on how tied I am to the original song.  The more connected I am to it, the more I want it to remain the way I heard it the first time.  No one way is the right way for everyone.  Always choose the one that feeds your soul.  That feels like the perfect fit – not too small or too big, but just right.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

 – Rumi

 In jazz there is a free flow of creativity among the players. The leadership of the piece of music being created is passed like a baton.  Each person has a unique contribution to the piece and at the same time, there is a collaboration to the piece.  A shared rhythm, melody and harmony is created because you build and shape the music as you go.  No one tries to lord it over the others, but rather hearing the direction one person is going, the others try to uplift it to an even higher plane of existence.  In this way, as each player changes their playing of their own instrument, they change the sound and direction of the music being played.  Not by directing it, but by exploring it.  As you explore yourself and shift and change, so does every other player.  You can see them sitting there, eyes closed, faces of joy, totally lost in the journey the music itself is directing.  The result sounds like they already knew where they were going, but in fact it was the exploration that directed the destination.

Unless someone can look into the core of your heart, and see the degree of your passion, or look into the depths of your soul and see the extent of your will, then they have no business telling you what you can or cannot achieve.  Because while they may know the odds, they do not know you.  Nor do they know the power of your angels.

  – Sandra Kring

It is interesting that when I write, especially poetry I hear music playing in my head.  It is usually a combination of different songs that kind of blend themselves in and out of the writing.  There is an emotional connection to the heart and soul when I write.  I can feel the searching for the right words, both from the meaning of the word and the vibration of the word.  For example, hope and faith.  I tend to go with faith, because to me the vibration of the word hope is lower.  It is more of a maybe word, whereas faith to me has an expectation that it will be so, that it will happen.  Hope has more of a maybe, I don’t know vibration to it.  That is my own personal relationship to the words.  Others would have a different relationship to the words and that is ok.  But what this does is to allow me to touch the personal passion I feel when I write.  Music does the same thing, touching emotional vibrations.

Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change with it.

 – Steve Maraboli

What is the mindset that changes everything?  It is having the courage to take risks, by wearing our heart on our sleeve.  To feel the emotions of everything we come in contact with, and not let it take us out, but rather let them flow on by.  It is about have the capacity to sacrifice the “I want you to like me” feelings, so that I can tell you want you need to hear, instead of what you want to hear.  It is being vulnerable enough within ourselves, to pull out all the bits of behavior and personality we have taken on to be accepted.  And leaving out in the open all the bits that make us who we are that we have hidden away, as not being worthy. It is the wearing those bits of who we are at a soul level, that connects our life to our consciousness.

Once you realize that the road is the goal, and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task, and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy  . . .

  – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Living our truth; reaching for the stars; falling to the earth and trying again – that is the road we are on.  We have to be willing to be rejected because we live real, authentic lives.  We have to be willing to mark out our boundaries not our of fear of others, but love of ourselves.  When we change our mindset and live out loud who we are – that is when we are brave enough to climb that ladder. When we have the courage to reach higher and higher into our true potential – that is when life itself is an ecstasy.

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Bring Your Unique Light To The World And Fulfill Your Life Purpose

In fairy tales when the princess was born, the King and Queen would give a feast and the wise women or fairies would bestow gifts on the child.  The gifts would range from virtue, to beauty, to wealth, to song.

I believe that you all have these wonderful gifts.  They feed into the pattern of what you came to earth to impact.  Impact is such a special word, because it has weight to it.  A small meteor falling to earth can create a large impact.  Every single one of us can make an impact in someone’s life.  In fact, we can impact the world.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.  Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray – Rumi

Pattern is another word that has a special energy to it.  Every puzzle that is solved, every person who becomes a master at something. it is all a matter of finding the patterns to a thing, and then using those patterns to your advantage.

A person can say what they believe.

They can take actions to demonstrate that they believe, but it is the patterns that result that really tell the true story.

This is because you can’t manipulate the patterns, like you can manipulate words and actions.  It is the patterns that create the self-sabotages in your life.  It is the patterns that reveal the truth about who you are.  They show up in every aspect of the life that you live, revealing not what you say you believe about yourself, but what is hidden beneath the words.

You can shift and change the patterns in your life by letting go of the things that no longer serve you.

It is like that security blanket a small child has.  Once the child understands that it doesn’t really need the blanket to be safe, the child is ready to let the blanket go.

You have things in your life that served you once upon a time.  But as you grew in knowledge and learned to apply that knowledge wisely, you outgrew some of those old beliefs that kept you safe.

To release the old patterns, you need to try on new behaviors.  Release the training wheels off your bike and ride confidently down the street without them.  Go out and create totally new patterns, that will serve you in your life now.

Every day is a once in a lifetime event.  How much more exciting would our lives be if we embraced this truth and lived accordingly? – Steve Maraboli

What is the thing that your heart aches for?  What is your soul’s longing?  What dream keeps you up at night?

Your purpose is as simple as loving others,

and

as complicated as how do you reach out without fear

and

bring that love into reality?

 

There are challenges in your life.   There are the consequences of bad decisions you made in the past.  You have had your heart broken, and you have broken hearts.  You have scars both inside and outside of your body.  How can you reach out one more time, when you were beaten by life the last time that you reached out?

You must, must, must, let all of the baggage go.  Drop it and walk away from it.  Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your life drifting through it without purpose, or ever fully understanding how to create a life that fulfills you.

It is in the journey itself that you uncover those gifts that you were presented with when you were born.

It is in the pursuit of genius in each of those gifts that the pattern of your life begins to take shape.

Like the puzzle, at first the colors seem so similar that you don’t notice the variations.  The puzzle pieces themselves seem to be the same shape and you can try 20 or 30 different pieces before you find the one that fits perfectly into the space.  There comes a point where the picture takes shape, and you can see what the next piece is.  It gets easier and easier.

You see all of us start out the journey thinking that we know where we are going, and what we need to bring to the journey to arrive at the destination.  But for a special group of us, what we learn is that it is the journey itself, not the destination that truly reveals and uses those gifts we have received.

A strong woman knows she has strength enough for the journey . . .  but a woman of strength knows it is on the journey that she will become strong – Luke Easter

As you grow in knowledge, apply the wisdom and step outside the comfort zones in your life, you learn to listen to your intuition.  That voice that whispers to your heart.  That souls voice says, “go right”.  “Stop here”.  “Now go there”. 

When you follow the directions of the soul, you uncover depths to your life that you never knew could exist.

Your soul reveals that you already know who you are, and what you brought to this life.

• What the meaning of your life is.
• What your purpose is.
• What you are being called to do and how to do it.

All of these things are whispered to you from your intuitive inner knowing.  You just need to listen, accept and then act on it.

• Trust that your life has a purpose.
• Trust that your life is important to everyone that it has touched and will touch.
• Trust that these dreams have been given to you for a reason, and that they are important.
• Trust that your voice needs to be heard, that someone out there needs to hear you and your story, because without it they will be lost.
• Trust that you were born to make an impact.  A deep crater.
• Trust that your life purpose is to live your life out loud so that you can learn, grow, serve and dare to be the magnificent creation of God.

Trust that your soul has a plan, and even if you can’t see it completely, know that everything will unfold as it is meant to – Deepak Chopra

Divine Timing – Trust, Let Go And See What Happens

When you truly “let go and let God” you stop trying to make something happen by a certain time.

You stop pushing the stopwatch.

You stop pushing those goals which are like large boulders up the hill, only to have them roll back down to the bottom when you get distracted.

What will then happen, is that divine timing is allowed to work in its own way, its own time, and its own mysterious plans and ways.

Paths open up before you that take you places that you would never have chosen to go.  Places that open you up to something new and so delightful that you never want to leave.

“Patience is quieting the ego and trusting divine timing” – Dean Jackson

Divine timing has amazing short cuts.  Let’s say that you have on your bucket list to go to Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You have no money to finance this kind of trip.

In your hometown is a non-profit that you volunteer to work for.  One day this non-profit, along with other agencies get a call to provide relief supplies for some villages near the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You volunteer to go and help to deliver the supplies.  The helicopter drops you off at the village.  You are now within immediate climbing distance of your goal.

Now they ask for some of you to go up towards the summit to deliver the supplies.  Divine timing has just express delivered a bucket list goal and all you had to do is say yes.

Now that story was totally made up, and you are probably saying, but that doesn’t really happen.  So, I want to share my own personal favorite story of divine timing happening in my own life, when I had no other choice but to let go and let God.

My middle son called me to tell me that he and his girlfriend were getting married.  I was so happy for them.  This was in January, and they had set the date for August.  I sat down and planned out what I could do to get enough money together to pay for their honeymoon.

If I was extremely budget conscious and could earn some extra commissions at work, I could just pay for the honeymoon that they wanted In Mexico.  The end of February they called with a new surprise; they had moved up the date to May.  I looked at my now destroyed plan and no matter how I moved the numbers, there was no way to pay for the honeymoon by the end of April.

So, I sat down and pulled out some paper and wrote a letter to myself in that moment in time, from myself in June.  I wrote how happy they were to go on their honeymoon.  They had a terrific time, and I poured every emotion and feeling of gratitude and happiness into this letter.  I wrote how amazed I was how unseen forces seemed to move my financial mountains to make it happen.  I wrote how I never could have foreseen the ability to make my dream of paying for their honeymoon happen, and how grateful I was to God for providing me with the funds.

Then I put the paper away, with no attachment to the outcome in a drawer and placed all of my faith in divine timing.  Two weeks later, I got a phone call from a neighbor who lived across the street from our second home in Upstate New York.  They wanted to know if I was interested in selling them 10 acres of our property. They would pay cash and we could close in two weeks.

Now when we had bought this house, it was on 20 acres.  I didn’t know why at that time, but I negotiated to cut the parcel in half and have 10 acres of land and 10 acres with the house.  We paid full price for the 10 acres with the house and $1.00 for the 10 acres of bare land.  So, I was able to say yes to the neighbor and we negotiated a fair price.  We closed the end of March and the first week of April I was able to fully pay for my son and daughter in-law’s honeymoon.

Even if I had thought of selling the land to pay for the honeymoon, it is highly unlikely that we could have sold and closed on it in 30 days.  That time of year the area is still covered in snow.  But I believe that divine timing knew that when I bought that house five years previously, I was going to need to liquidate that land to pay for my son’s honeymoon.

Because I had listened to intuition and split the property, divine timing was able to maneuver into place a quick sale and funds to pay for that honeymoon.

An analogy of “letting go and letting God” is water.  Water always finds a way.  It might take a year, it might take a day, but what is meant to be will always find its own way to completion.

I always think of the Grand Canyon.  Water carved that canyon out of solid stone.  In one place within the canyon is a small island of stone in a perfect circle of water that wound around it.  I don’t know how that perfect circle of stone is still standing.   But the story my imagination tells me is that the stone was especially strong in that one spot and that it took water a lot of time and persistence, but it was able to carve away all of the parts that didn’t belong, until what was left, was what was supposed to be there.  A tall stone island in a perfect circle of water.

So, know that in your journey, you are always on perfect time, divine time.  You are not early; you are not late.  You are right now where you are supposed to be.

That goal, off in the distance that you are busy running to, will happen right on time.  It may be that like me, you don’t see any way that you can make it happen.  But if you are willing to listen to intuition; If you are willing to do things that may not make sense at the time you are doing them; like splitting up 20 acres into two 10-acre parcels, divine timing will place what you need into your hands, right on time.

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

We here at LemonadeMakers not only write about waking up to the reality of who you are and your life purpose and living up to your full potential.   We also are here to help you ask yourself the right questions to open up your mind to the possibilities of living the life you have always dreamed of.  Contact us anytime and we are happy to have that conversation.

Transformation Is A Major Part of Lifes Journey

Can you imagine the conversation that might take place between a butterfly and a caterpillar that is about to build their chrysalis? It might sound like that.

How would you explain this overwhelming need to your non-caterpillar friends that you have to get so totally wrapped up in your need to change and transform? The birds are not going to understand. The bees are not going to get it. None of the other kinds of insects and animals go through this type of change.

But you know that you just have to do it. There really is no other way to answer your soul’s calling. You have to completely transform. You have to let go of what is no longer serving you.

You are not a climber of leaves and branches any longer. You have this overwhelming desire to fly. To soar. You can’t put a name to this yet, because you haven’t experienced it. But you can feel this constant calling to shift and change. You don’t understand it, yet at a deeper level you know that this is why you were born and you have to go for it.

Nothing happens until the pain of remaining the same outweighs the pain of change.

 – Arthur Burt

I believe that the change doesn’t have to feel painful. I think that the emotion that we feel is fear. But if you really analyze this feeling that we get, isn’t it an awful lot like when you are riding in a roller coaster? You are nearing the top of the climb and about to go speeding down the other side, isn’t it that feeling?

What if this feeling, this fear, is really anticipation? I know that I love this feeling of riding a roller coaster. The screaming, laughter, and excitement. Not everyone does. But a lot of us do.

What if this is the feeling of fear of change, and we change our definition from fear to anticipation? If we can change the meaning of this kind of feeling then, when we enter the chrysalis, we are anticipating the feeling of spreading our wings. We are anticipating the feeling of the wind beneath our wings.

If we are anticipating these feelings, then transformation is exciting. It is something to be desired. We enter into a wonderful relationship with it.

Sound interesting? Want to explore this together in greater detail? Continue your journey to transformation with us.  We are having a free online event “A Conscious Conversation” where we will explore how to courageously transform our lives to fully live into our divine destiny.

Events

Don’t Be The Missing Piece In The Divine Puzzle

Unexplored Possibilities Are Waiting For You To Release Them

“Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless” – Jamie Paolinetti

Possibilities are like rabbits.  The more you think about them, the more they multiply.  Pretty soon you have a field full of them.  The trick is to turn them into probabilities.  Probabilities are a guide to enlightenment, in the journey of life.

It is the secret of how the Phoenix arises from the ashes and is reborn.  The Phoenix has coded in its DNA the belief of triumph over impossible odds.  So even when defeated, it rises once more from the ashes to achieve the impossible.

Imagination is like turning on the faucet.  When you start imagining the possibilities, the water gets turned on and you start getting ideas.

The trick is to just start writing them down.  No judgement or editing or being critical.  Just put them down on paper, idea after idea.  Possibility after possibility.

Once you have wrung every last drop out of your faucet, then you start looking at each possibility and see how many of them can grow into a probability.

That is how the miracles are born.  It is looking for the one thing that leaps off the page, no matter how impossible it seems.  That is the one, the one that your inner guidance is calling out for.  That is the one that causes the Phoenix to rise up from the ashes.  Do not allow the critical, judgmental thinking to chain it from taking flight.

“Possibilities and miracles mean the same thing” – Prentice Mulford

So where does that critical judgmental thinking come from?  It comes from your own insecurities.  From every unkind word you have heard.   From every well-meaning person who said, “Oh no honey, you can’t do that”, girls aren’t good at sports, math, or science.  Or boys don’t playhouse or with dolls.  From every time you tried something, failed and walked away.  From every time you said you would do something and didn’t.

All of those negative experiences pile up in your mind and become these critical judgmental thinking machines.  They promise you safety, that you won’t get hurt if you listen to them, but in reality, they are the bars of a prison of your own making.

The trick is to not believe the magician with his sleight of hand tricks. Not becoming attached to those negative beliefs.  They can become chains linked to an anchor that you drag around.  Your imaginations can’t take flight with chains connected to an anchor keeping you bound to the earth.  You need to release all of those negative, judgmental thoughts, as they do not serve you.

They are limitations, illusions of the magician.  He tells you that if you leave his stage, you will be in darkness, no longer in the protection of his light.  If you build barricades from his illusions of danger, they will leave you exposed to having lived an “unlived” life.  A life lived without passion and purpose.  A life that doesn’t fulfill your divine destiny.

“Breathe in the sweet air of limitless possibility, and make life as rich as you know it can be” – Ralph Marston

 

Probability of Success

I won’t – 0%

I can’t – 10%

I don’t know how – 20%

I wish I could – 30%

I want to – 40%

I think I might – 50%

I might – 60%

I think I can – 70%

I can – 80%

I am – 90%

I did – 100%

Increase your chances of success by saying “I can, I am, and I did”.  What if you stopped saying, “I wish I could” and instead said, “Guess what I did today?”

We at LemonadeMakers would love to hear your stories.  Drop us an IM and share both your successes and not so successful stories.  And as always, let us know if we can assist you in burning those insecurities.  We love a good bonfire!

Silence Is The Space Between The Words, The Inner Sanctuary Of The Heart

When tragedy strikes someone that we love, we all have this tendency to want to fix it. That if we just had the perfect words to say, or the right thing to do, we could make it all better.

But grief is a walk alone.  Others can be there, and listen.  But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, your denial, anger, and bitter loss.  You’ll come to your own peace, hopefully . . . but it will be on your own, in your own time.

– Cathy Lamb

When I was younger they had these commercials for both band-aids and children’s aspirin. In the band-aid commercial the mom puts a band-aid on the little boys scrape, kisses it and he is smiling and his pain is gone. In the baby aspirin the pill magically makes the child feel better. Unfortunately, in real life, we can’t always “kiss it and make it better.”

What we can do is be there with a hug and a listening ear. Let them vent their anger, cry out their sadness, and get a release for the overpowering emotions.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing . . . not healing, not curing . . . that is a friend who cares.

  – Henri Nouwen

When my nephew was killed, my sister was so strong. Making all of the funeral arrangements, who would speak at the service, what songs would be sung, renting the ballroom at the boardwalk – she went all out and was so together. She spoke at the funeral of the over seven years trying to get pregnant because her endometriosis was so bad. How when he was born, the cord was around his neck several times and she had to have an emergency C-section. All the years of loving him, and what he gift he was to her life. She told these stories and not one tear or breakdown. She hugged everyone at the memorial and not one breakdown. I don’t think that I could have done what I saw her do.

Later that night, all of the busyness of the funeral was done, then she broke down. All I could do was hold her. Tell her I loved her. That I was there for her. It was the first time, I couldn’t “kiss it and make it all better.” It has been several years of holding her and loving her, but she has come out the other end of a dark tunnel.

The reality is that you will grieve forever.  You will not “get over” the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it.  You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.  You will be whole again but you will never be the same.  Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.

  – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There comes a time when the healing happens. It doesn’t mean that you no longer miss what has been taken from you, just that it no longer controls your life. Each of us handles grief differently. We shouldn’t judge another person by how they handle it or expect them to “be better faster.”

No rule book.  No time frame.  No judgement.  Grief is as individual as a fingerprint.  Do what is right for your soul.

  _ Hw

We can look with fresh eyes at the beauty that still exists in our world. We can walk step by step in the arms of loved ones, knowing that when we stumble in the darkness of grief, they will put the light of hope in our hearts, that things will get easier.

Healing comes when we choose to walk away from darkness and move towards a brighter light.

  – Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Listening to the silence of the night, we can open our hearts and ears to the sounds of the universe. If we just be in the present moment, we can hear beautiful songs we have never heard before. The night insects, like crickets will sing to us. We can hear the night birds, like the owl tells us a story. We can be serenaded by the croaking of the frogs. Never stop listening for the messages from the creator, because these messages will be a balm to our hearts, helping us to heal.

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Live Your Truth, And Don’t Let Any Obstacle Get In Your Way

Years ago I was a loan processor for a company in Seattle.  I worked for a branch in an area called South Center, which was next to a shopping mall.  Most of the people there smoked and they would be out front every hour smoking a cigarette.  It worked out that they spent 10-15 minutes of every hour, out front smoking.  I didn’t smoke, and I didn’t feel right about spending “working” hours I got paid for, standing out front while everyone else smoked.

They gave me a bad time for the first few months I worked there and then gave up trying to convince me to be part of the crowd.  You have a moral code, you may have a very strict code, or not so strict.  To be other than average, you need to work hard to excel and be a master of your craft.  Spending 15 minutes of every hour for 8 hours means that you are working  only 6 hours.  A lot of work can be accomplished in those two hours.  Or you could just sit back and be average standing out front with the smokers – the choice is always yours to make.

“The only way to discover our true potential, is to clear out the clutter and focus on what matters”  – Unknown

Thinking back to that rock climber, each hand hold and each foot hold gets her closer to the top.  Her focus is solely on getting her to the top.  She isn’t thinking about the climb down, or the ride home, or going to work on Monday.  Every decision you make should be all about moving you one step closer to just today’s goals.  You don’t focus on the past or the future, just the next move for today.

“Each day, focus your attention on what you want.  Each day, take one step that will bring your closer to it.  All things are possible!  The key is to identify it, claim it for yourself, and believe that you are worthy to have it” – Iyanla Vanzant

The Best Things In Life Are The Moments When We See The Little Things Clearly

 Such a profound question – what is life?

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, that hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.  Delicious Ambiguity.  

  – Gilda Radner

When you look around at your friends and family, how many people do you know that “just exist”? They are here. They wake up each day. They take in the breath of life, they eat, they go to work or school, they come home and watch a movie, TV, play video games. They are here, but what else is there in life, besides just being here?

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. 

   – Marcel Proust

There is something about asking questions that opens life up.  About being curious.  Asking yourself the questions that you are afraid to ask, afraid of how the answers might change your life.  Questions like, “Why am I not happy with who I am”?

Be not afraid of life.  Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

  – William James 

I think that there is more to life, than just existing. I think of some of the stories that I love best. They are made up of characters that progress down a timeline, the hero’s journey. They are walking along a path and something happens. Things go wrong, they change to meet the challenges and come out the other end a different person than the one we met in the beginning of the story.

Time is like a river, you cannot touch the same water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.  Enjoy every moment of life . . . ,

  – Unknown

They discover things about themselves during the journey. They discover the “fire in the belly”, passion. They learn to speak up and speak out. They learn that they have courage to fight for truth, justice, life and liberty. We root for them to beat the odds and win. Take the first “Rocky” movie.  He is employed in a sketchy business as a collector for a loan shark..  He boxes and  is made fun of, nothing but a loser and a bum.  He dreams of a better life and thinks that fighting in the ring, could be his ticket to be somebody. He gets a one in a million shot at it, wins against the heavyweight champion, falls in love.

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations. 

  – Unknown

Boxing was his passion.  He learned to have self confidence in his talent.  He learned that we can all be somebody if we are willing to pay the price of hard work to make it happen.  If we are willing to not give up when it looks hopeless.  As the rest of the series of movies show, transformation is an ongoing process.  We will learn valuable and painful lessons when we don’t remain conscious of who we are and where we are going in life.

Most of us have been through some sort of personal hero’s journey in our life.

Someday everything will make perfect sense. So, for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears and keep reminding yourself that EVERYTHING happens for a reason. 

  – Unknown 

What did we discover about ourselves? Brendon Buchard tells a story about his own personal journey when he was in college. He had a bad breakup with his girlfriend.  She was the one he was going to spend the rest of his life with.  So to try and get out of his depression he went on a trip with a college friend to South America.  They were driving in a rural mountainous area on a narrow road.  The road turned out to be a hairpin curve.  His friend lost control of the car, and they went tumbling off the mountain.  When he came to he was bleeding.  They had fallen down a ravine.  He thought that he was dying.  In despair he asked himself three questions – Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?

Thankfully they didn’t die.  They both got medical attention, and when he returned to the United States he was a different person.  He is an international bestseller with multiple  books; he is the founder of Experts Academy and High Performance Academy and is a sought after motivational speaker.  How was his life impacted from getting a broken heart?  From an auto accident that could have ended his life?  We never know how the painful experiences of our life, will be positively used for the rest of our lives.

Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once. 

  – Paulo Coelho

I think that we all want to live a life that results in great friends and family that love us.  That results in us being happy and passionate about what we do with our days and nights.  That results in knowing that we had a positive impact in the world. But sometimes we fall asleep to those dreams.  Sometimes we get so beaten down by our hero’s journey, that we give the dream up as being impossible.  What I have discovered in life is that we tend to do one of two things.  We act without thinking our decision all of the way through and so we end up paying the bill of “unintended  consequences”.  Or we think about it, and think about it, and do nothing about it.  Why?  Because we can’t face our fears about “what if?”.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.  Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow.  Let reality be reality.  Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they life. 

  – Lao Tzo

So each morning, what if the first question we ask ourselves is:

If my life is a story, what can I do today to make it a New York Times Bestseller?

What could I do today, that a movie producer would want to make my life into an inspirational movie?

What can I do today that uses up all the best parts of me (my talents), to inspire the world around me to be a better place?

What can I do today that makes people laugh, smile and be more joyful?

Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. 

  – Norman Cousins

They have a saying, that the best stories are in the graveyard.  There are books that never got written; apologies and forgiveness that were said in their heart, but never left their lips.  Millions of secret recipes that never got passed on.  Don’t wait for the end to ask, “Did I live, love and matter”, but instead ask it each night.  Ask if you showed love, and gave love to others each night. Ask if you were able to do one small thing today that mattered to someone. If you can say yes, to these questions each night, you have a wonderful life. You inspire me to try harder, to be better, to live fully in the present. To lose myself in the sunset.

Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun. 

  – Randy Pausch

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